Consumer Attitudes Toward Storing and Thawing Chicken and Effects of the Common Thawing Practices on Some Quality Characteristics of Frozen Chicken

Abstract

In this study, a survey was conducted to both evaluate the consumers’ general attitudes for purchasing and storing the raw chicken and determine the thawing practices used for defrosting frozen chicken at home. About 75% of the consumers indicated purchasing chicken meat at least once a week or more. Furthermore, the majority (82.16%) of those who stored at least a portion of the raw chicken stated freezing the raw chicken meat at home. Freezing the chicken meat was considered to have no effect on the quality by 43.49% of the consumers while 56.51% thought that freezing had either negative or positive effects on the quality. The survey study indicated that top five most commonly used thawing practices included thawing on the kitchen counter, thawing in the refrigerator, thawing in the warm water, thawing in the microwave, and thawing under tap water. In addition, an experimental study was conducted to determine the effects of these most commonly used thawing practices on some quality characteristics of the chicken meat including pH, drip loss, cooking loss, color analysis and textural profile analysis. Although, L* value for thawing on the kitchen counter was the lowest, after cooking, none of the thawing treatments have a significant effect on the color values. Thawing in the microwave produced the highest drip loss of 3.47% while the lowest drip loss of 0.62% was observed with thawing in the refrigerator. On the other hand, thawing in the microwave and refrigerator caused the lowest cooking loss values of 18.29% and 18.53%, respectively. Nevertheless, there were no significant differences among textural parameter values of the defrosted and then cooked samples using the home based thawing practices, indicating similar quality characteristics among the samples.

Physicochemical Properties and Protein Denaturation of Pork Longissimus Dorsi Muscle Subjected to Six Microwave-Based Thawing Methods

“…In contrast, L* for the samples subjected to MT, MUT, MIT, MAT, and MWT did not significantly differ from that for the fresh control (p > 0.05). This observation is similar to those reported by Anna [33] and Benli [36]. These authors demonstrated that thawing method had no significant influence on L*.…”

Physicochemical and Sensory Properties of Broiler Chicken Breast Meat Stored Frozen and Thawed Using Various Methods

“…After the 7th month of freezing storage, however, the meat was characterized by more intense yellow colour (b * ) saturation than after the 1st month, irrespective of the thawing method applied. Studies conducted by Benli [34] on meat thawed using domestic methods and subjected to thermal treatment did not confirm changes in L * parameter of breast meat as well. Galobart and Moran [39] demonstrated that cooking thawed breast meat further increased L * value and reduced the differences in L * , a * , and b * parameters.…”

“…Differences in the amount of thermal leakage between the different methods become less significant (p > 0.05) as the freezing storage period got prolonged. Benli [34] also demonstrated the impact of thawing methods on the volume of thermal leakage, but obtained lower thermal leakage in using microwave thawing and deep freeze processes, while obtaining higher leakage using tap water, warm water, and kitchen counter. Yu et al [28] confirmed that the volume of thermal leakage in frozen breast meat varied depending on the temperature while thawing.…”

Effect of freezing on electrical properties and quality of thawed chicken breast meat

“…The consumption of poultry meat has increased over decades and has reached high levels worldwide [4,5]. Due to the growth in consumer demand for safe poultry products, chicken meat quality assessment and control has become a necessity [6].…”